If Tears Could Build A Stairway
by Dashing Golden Dreams
Summary: Summary: A painful memory came flooding back recently, and Ron has to make his peace or deal with the past forever. One-shot. Sad. T for language and themes.


**If Tears Could Build A Stairway**

Summary: A painful memory came flooding back recently, and Ron has to make his peace or deal with the past forever. One-shot. Sad. T for language.

Disclaimer: None of this ever happened. I don't own anyone and I don't make any money from this.

I sit alone in the cemetery. For once it's just me and my thoughts. No fans here to hound me for autographs, no guys in suits to tell me what I'll be doing next week, no Mike to try to "snap me out of it." Mike's a nice kid, but he doesn't understand. I don't need to be snapped out of it. I need to think about it, because I'll never come to terms with this if I just try to ignore it. I'd been ignoring it for years.

It was when they turned me heel that I started seeing him and hearing him again. My best friend from childhood, the boy next door. From toddlers to preteens, we were inseparable. We played basketball together, watched the WWF together, read our little boys' books. We were always trying to solve mysteries, like Encyclopedia Brown, or the Hardy Boys (not Jeff and Matt, of course: the kid detectives, they were like the boy versions of Nancy Drew.) We were so alike it was scary, like we were twins or something. We both wanted to be famous singers one day, famous wrestlers the next day. We'd mess around in the back yard trying to be Hogan or Andre or Macho Man. Probably wouldn't have hurt so much if we'd had a trampoline, but there was no room for one in either of our yards, and it wasn't like our families had the money for one anyway. It was a rough neighborhood, but we figured if we practiced those moves enough, we could fight off any tough-talking thug that came our way. Guess we didn't figure on them having guns. We were just kids, anyway.

He popped back into my head the minute my character supposedly "snapped" and turned on Hennigan. I wasn't too cool with having to light up in the arena and blow smoke in his face—I hardly smoke anymore, only when I'm nervous, and I know he didn't like it. When I started acting all mean and thug-like was when I heard his voice, just the way I remembered it. _C'mon Ronnie, you don't gotta go off like that. He didn't mean to hurt ya or nothin'. Let's go play ball or somethin' instead. Ease up off him, Ronnie._ That voice… it was him all right, from when we were ten… I remembered the exact moment. I was beating up another kid exactly like I was beating up John that day, only it was legit. I don't remember exactly how the fight got started, all I know is he mouthed off, and I mouthed off back, and then he chucked a rock at me—hit me right in the eye, and then I was on him like ugly on an ape. It wasn't the first time that year I'd got in a fight at school. Things weren't great at home, and it was wearing on my little nerves, plus I was at that age when a boy starts getting rowdy. I didn't mind being known as a guy not to mess with: it was better than being one of the weak ones. My friend was weak, that's what I thought then. He never picked a fight, and if someone tried to pick one with him, he'd just walk away. He decided about that time that it was his job to keep me out of trouble, and I just hated it when he was like that, always telling me to calm down, reminding me that I'd get suspended. Like I gave two shits about getting suspended. Wasn't like I was learning anything anyway.

His voice kept coming back every time I was putting the hurt on somebody in a match. Sometimes I even thought I saw him—as a kid still—in the crowd, but I'd look away and look back and it would just be some little boy in a John Cena shirt or something. But there was one day I swear I saw him, right there in the front row, that scared look in his eyes—the look that still haunts me. I screamed out his name without thinking. Took everybody by surprise—they thought I'd legit gone crazy. Maybe I had. But of course, the WWE creative department being what it is, they decided to work it into the story, make it a catchphrase. A goddam catchphrase! I couldn't stand to think of the memory, I'd been repressing it for years, and now I had to say that name over and over, even work it into my rap? That was bullshit. It stung every time those words passed my lips. I did my best to turn my sadness into more crazy, just be the kooky conspiracy theorist character the fans were eating up. But it was tearing up my heart, so I had to come here, back home to Charlotte, to this little plot of land in the cemetery just down the street from where I used to live, to make my peace.

It happened when we were fifteen. I'd been running with a tough group of guys for a while now, and some guy from some other gang had taken up with one of the guys from our gang's girls… you know how it goes, of course we had to make a fight out of it. I wasn't expecting him to come along. We hardly talked anymore. He was on the honor roll, college bound, an all-around goody two shoes. I was a punk-ass kid on the street, scraping by in school; I was damn lucky I hadn't been expelled yet. The fight was about to start when he comes out of nowhere, yelling "Ronnie!" Embarrassed wasn't even the right word; I was fucking _mortified._

"Get outta here!" I yelled back at him. "This is a fight, man, not a pick-up game!"

"You better get outta here too!" he said. "Your momma's been looking for you. She's scared to death." God, did he have to do that? Make me look like a momma's boy? I felt like a damn fool. My fist was itching to punch him and shut his mouth good, but I couldn't do that… we might have grown apart but I still cared about the kid.

"Don't worry about me and don't worry about my momma! Just get!" I yelled. That was when it happened. The other guys had been watching us. We'd been ready to fight with our fists. They wanted a different kind of fight. It was like the bullet was flying in slow motion. If I'd moved just an inch it would have hit me. To this day, I wish I had moved.

The bullet struck him right in the heart. He died with that scared look on his face. He died because he was trying to protect me. That's all he'd been trying to do the whole time, since we were kids: to save me from what was at the end of the road I was going down. I should have known he knew better than me. That was the road his pops went down, and that was why he just lived with his mom. I knew it all along and I never listened to him. Why didn't I just listen?

I kneel in front of the little gray headstone, tears falling from my eyes, getting the stupid fake flowers all wet. It would've been his birthday. He would've been 40. Instead he died when he was only fifteen. I should've taken that bullet. It should be him with the money, it should be him on TV every week living his dream. Not me. I don't deserve it.

"I'm sorry, Jimmy. I'm so sorry."

James "Jimmy" Aaron Rogers

December 18, 1971- March 12, 1987

_If tears could build a stairway,_

_And memories a lane,_

_I would walk right up to Heaven_

_And bring you back again._


End file.
